Pruning

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Christina Rossetti

Although today he prunes my twigs with pain,
yet doth his blood nourish and warm my root;
tomorrow I shall put forth buds again
and clothe myself with fruit.

Christina Rossetti

A Feast!

Okay so it might not look like a very big feast but it was a feast never the less!

The first of the ‘Sungold’ tomatoes that I have been growing in the conservatory. It has been hanging there ripe and ready amid an array of it’s green siblings for nearly a week now and I have been putting off eating it in the hope that some of it’s neighbours would catch up, but with the airport beckoning tomorrow in the early hours I decided I wasn’t going to chance it going past best so I picked it, I photographed it, and then I ate it.

The smell brought back memories of my childhood and my father’s greenhouse – shop bought tomatoes never smell like that, even the ones they sell on the vine. The skin made a pleasant cracking noise as it gave way between my teeth, then my mouth was filled with the aroma of the soft flesh even before the seeds and sweet juice filled my mouth and washed my tongue with flavour. It was warm from the sun, sweet and delicious, a feast indeed.

First tomato I have ever grown, wasn’t hard at all, will almost definitely do it again.

Risk Taking

Yesterday I took the afternoon off, I have missed my last couple of days off due to work and decided that with the sun shinning and the garden looking quite forlorn that it was well past time to give it some attention. The Acer we were given as an anniversary present was finally put in its pot, plants were moved, pots cleaned out and then re-potted with fresh plants and the garden furniture was brought out. I never got around to doing all the weeding or trimming the edge of the lawn, maybe next time, but it is certainly looking better. As I dug and planted and watered I made big plans – I always do when I get to spend some time in the garden – I plan what plants I would like, were I might want a new bed or how I would like a water feature, the list goes on, however I have never managed to achieve them, for three reasons.

Firstly I do struggle to find the time, a garden takes a lot of work and sometimes it can be weeks inbetween me having any significant time in it. I like to have a nice garden, but I don’t enjoy gardening like some people do and when I get some precious time off other things are far more attractive to be doing, so I tend to plant shrubs and ground cover, which looks after itself for the most part. Secondly while I do like plants and a garden I am not at all keen on meeting the various crawling and flying wild-life that live in and around them, and this garden has an army of hunter spiders which can jump so first sight of one of those means that part of the garden is off limits and I become wary of any new patch I move onto. Lastly and probably most significantly I always seem to end up somewhere were there isn’t a garden established so I have to start from scratch, planting young plants that I never get to see in their full maturity, the old Rectory garden was just starting to fill out, and I moved what I could before the bulldozer moved in, but the large well established stuff just couldn’t be shifted. So while this garden doesn’t look totally new, it is far from how I would like it and well established.

The combination of all these things, plus the fact that nothing at all seems to want to grow under the crab apple tree means a radical step has been taken, one which I swore I would never take and could turn out to be a major disaster.

In a planter I have a Bay Tree tucked up in a corner between the kitchen and the conservatory so that it has the protection it needs, last year spearmint was planted at it’s base to tumble over the sides, but mint being mint meant that it really grew too much and I decided that a cushion of thyme would be better, so in went lemon thyme, golden thyme, and garden thyme, in a couple of months a lovely colourful cushion will have surrounded the trunk.

By now you might have guessed what risk I have taken; the spearmint is now planted directly in the garden tucked up against the fence behind the crab apple tree!

Mary, Mary …

A couple of weeks ago I caught the tail end of a television programme in it they were talking about how easy it was to grow certain vegetables in plant pots, you didn’t need a garden or any great knowledge, yeah, yeah I thought.

While doing some shopping at Sainsbury’s a couple of days later a display of seeds caught my eye, so I went over to have a look, not really with any great plan in mind, or with the intention of buying anything. There was a whole range of seeds, cucumbers, kohl rabbi, carrots, peas, beans, herbs of just about every variety, courgettes, cabbage, peppers, even asparagus. Two hours later I was back home, with tomato seeds, fennels seeds, two types of cut and come again lettuce seeds, radish seeds and beetroot seeds – also a variety of pots, trays and compost from B&Q purchased on the way back from Sainsbury’s.

For a couple of days they just sat there, looking at me, then on Sunday afternoon I took some time out and armed with only my bare hands and the information on the seed packets I decided to venture into the world of vegetable growing.

In a little propagator tray complete with self expanding pelts of peat, purchased from B&Q, I planted some tomato and fennel seeds, from these seeds I hope to get one tomatoes plant and nine fennel plants. I will pot up the tomato plant and it will go in the conservatory, one of the fennel plants will be potted up and allowed to grow for the leaves, the others will be potted several in a pot and be eaten small. Once these plants have left the propagator the current plan is to repeat the process so that hopefully the harvesting of the crops is staggered. I covered the seeds over with their little plastic lid and they have been sitting in the kitchen under a cloud of mist every since, nothing much happening there yet!

Then I turned my attention to the cut and come again lettuce and beetroot, I sowed two medium sized pots with the lettuce and one big pot with the beetroot and placed them on the south facing kitchen window sill. The plan with these is to eat the thinnings of the beetroots as they grow in salads then eat the rest small as and when, and seed some more beetroot at a later date. In another week or so I plan to plant some more cut and come again lettuce so as to hopefully have a staggered supply of that too and the radishes, as they apparently grow quicker than the beetroot. But hopefully in the summer I can look forward to eating my own home grown lettuce, tomatoes, beetroot and radishes, but it is all a bit of an experiment really, the beetroot and radish is supposed to have far more space than I am giving it and the salad leaves are supposed to be planted outside, although it is a variety for growing in pots, the fennel on the other hand isn’t and should be outside and will need soil banked up onto it to keep the bulbs white, so how they might or might not turn out is anyone’s guess, anyway as the old saying goes – nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Today, after days of peering into the pots, like an expectant child only to be disappointed by just seeing a layer of brown soil, I peered and saw little shoots pushing the soil out of the way, their heads still bent over from being cocooned in the seed, most of the leaves still folded tight shut, it was just like Christmas!

Volunteer Needed

This warm wet weather has made the grass grow after what I thought would be its last cut – yet again. The weeds are popping up everywhere as if it was spring.

Anyone fancy a spot of gardening?

£4.96

It was released today that Prince Charles had spent £41,000 on his gardens (plural) last tax year.

Our garden (singular) had money spent on it today £2.98 on an Icelandic Poppy and £1.98 on a Campanula.

I wonder if Charles plants his own plants.

More Valuble

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Religion

For those of you who do not know, September last year we moved, the house in which we used to live is due to be demolished, and has been lying empty since then, regularly I go round it to check all is okay.
The garden is slowly turning into a jungle. Beautiful wild flowers are appearing in the once upon a time lawn – why is it that when it was a lawn the only flowers to try and grow in it were dandelions and travelling buttercups? While most of the plants have been moved some still struggle with the ever encroaching weeds to declare that the spot used to be a garden. The hard edges of the paving are being softened by the unchecked weeds and the dreaded leylandii are reaching for heaven at an accelerating rate. I am not sure why I should be so surprised at how quickly nature reclaims it’s own, anyone with a garden knows it is a constant battle.

Yesterday as I did my usual walk round I heard the frantic noise of chirping. At this point I should add that I have had to coax a small cat down from the tree on two occasions when it has got itself stuck, so the rescuing of animals seems to have been added to the list of things they don’t teach us during theological training, anyway, after a bit of searching looking for some wounded bird I discovered not a wounded bird but the gapping beaks of three hungry young chicks; a bird had built it’s nest in the pillar of the wall, beside the gate.

Last night, we had a Vestry meeting concerning our ongoing redevelopment project. The project has reached that stage, which all projects seem to reach when concerns are raised about finance.

As I pondered on the meeting I remembered those birds and in turn that reminded me of these words of Jesus – “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

Words Of Wisdom

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Family Life

Joy of joys I stumbled across one of the most useful quotes in the world.

A good garden may have some weeds. – Thomas Fuller

Now all I need to do is define some!